


In These Times of Peace

by PTomlin



Series: A Thousand Years [1]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Child Death, Fluff and Angst, Genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTomlin/pseuds/PTomlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been four years since the Great War ended and it still doesn't seem real.  </p><p>The Fearlings are contained in a prison of Pookan design, a cage out of time and space. The Tsar has his Golden Age, and a Golden General stands watch over them all.  </p><p>Aster and his mate watch their little ones sleep and the world spins on above them.</p><p>Because in these times of peace, who has cause to be afraid?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In These Times of Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tatou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatou/gifts).



> Happy birthday QWERTYbee!

 

 

"Are you checking on the kits again?"

"No!" he says, whirling, paws clasped against the edge of the bassinet behind him.  Maeve is smiling at him with half-open eyes from where she leans against the doorway, arms crossed loose and lazy, and the blanket he gave her for their mating ceremony is draped sideways across her shoulders, its many colors muted in the shadows cast by her body. 

"Maybe?" he amends.

She shakes her head and pushes off from the wall to join him at the crib side.

"How are they?" He turns back to the crib and she presses herself to his back, tucks her head against his shoulder, peering over to gaze down at their kits. Her arms wrap around his waist and he knows that even though she pretends to be exasperated at him for leaving their nest in the middle of the night, she welcomes the excuse to steal moments like these.

It has been four years since the Great War ended and it still doesn't seem real. 

"They're so little," he says, wistful, desperate. How can he protect something so small?

The kits are tiny, blind things, yet, barely three days old, their naming ceremony not yet held, the color of their coats not yet determined.  They cuddle together against the swirls of blankets in their sleep, each no bigger than his paw.  They are beautiful, and they are his.

And hers. Aster tilts his head, rubs his furred cheek along Maeve's, grinding his teeth in a purr that is answered by her own.

"They'll grow," she says. "Faster than we'd like, no doubt."

"They'll be right little terrors, won't they?"

" _We_ were right little terrors," she says, laughing softly in the semi-darkness.

He has loved her for as long as he knows, a rivalry that began in their childhood and a partnership that blossomed across the years. When the Tsar had declared his War, she'd defied her father--the head of their clan--and the two of them had joined the ranks together, to roam the stars as soldiers. 

(He doesn't remember her voice anymore.)

"Maeve..." he says, the panic catching in his throat.  It has been four years, and sometimes the fear still overwhelms him, the memories of the things they'd seen on the edges of space, witnessing what the Fearlings and their ilk were capable of, what they could do to those who stood in their path, the way they hunted down the innocent...

"I know, love, I know. But Aster, it’s been four years." She moves, shifting forward, pulling his arm around her shoulders to stand beside him. "And our--our Golden General stands guard over us all, doesn't he?" She tilts her head, smiles at him, and tugs on one of his ears, soft and teasing and sure. He loves, that smile. 

"Come on. Let's get some sleep. While we still have the chance! You're a father now," she adds in a giddy whisper.

She is beautiful, and his heartbeat comes quick as he forgets the need to breathe.

"I love you," he says, breathless and awed. It is not true, not by half. He is besotted, bewildered, beside himself with love.

She knows it.

"You are ridiculous," she tells him, enunciating the word with teeth and tongue and grinning as she moves to nip at his nose.

The War is over.  The Fearlings are contained in a prison of Pookan design, a cage out of time and space. The Tsar has his Golden Age, and a Golden General stands watch over them all. 

Maeve tugs him toward their room and he lets himself be led, offering weak, giddy objections to make her laugh.  "The kits--I--just one more minute, one more--"

They collapse into the nest wrapped up in each other's limbs, giggling and shushing each other in the darkness. The giggling dissolves into nuzzling and affectionate caresses, the slide of cheek against cheek and blunt claws through fur, and Aster's eyes are half-lidded in bliss and sleep as he drinks it in. In the silence of the night, Maeve lays back and pulls him to her, cradling his head against her ruff.

"Sleep, my love," she whispers as his eyes slide closed, breathing in the scent of his mate. "The world will still be here when you wake."

\---

When Aster does wake, the earth is still cold. It is cold but it moves, vibrates in the walls around him and a feeling of _wrongwrongwrong_ settles in his gut. He is groggy with sleep and confusion and half-convinced he is dreaming. He reaches for Maeve and his paws meet only the body-warm mix of straw and down.

Panic claws the sleep from his mind and he sits up, eyes searching the still darkness for his mate. A twitch of long ears from the doorway draws his gaze.

"Maeve?"

She stands in the junction between their room and the kits', draped in the blanket she'd worn earlier as if she'd only gone to check on them again. But her daggers are curled into her paws where she holds them low at her sides and every line of her is taut and unmoving, nose and ears quivering and trained upwards.

It is not a dream, and the earth around them trembles with a pounding from the surface above.

_No. No, no, no._

"Why didn't you wake me up?" Aster asks, tripping out of the nest, searching in the darkness for his own weapons.

"I didn't want to worry you if it was nothing." She speaks, but does not move, does not look at him. Her voice is too calm.

"But it isn't nothing, is it?" He finds his guards and bandolier and begins strapping them in place, doing up the buckles and ties with frantic but practiced motions.

"Aster." His name is barely a sigh from Maeve's lips and she looks to him and she is terrified. 

"Get the kits."

"I can't carry them and defend us both--"

He wants to tell her to stay, stay here in the nest where it is safe, where he can seal the entrances and stand guard. But he knows he can't, that she would never let him. 

That they'd never stand a chance.

"The--the sling Aria gave us. You could--"

"Yes."

She ducks from his sight and Aster rechecks the leather straps, rechecks that his boomerangs are secure in their bindings.  He perches on the edge of the nest to secure his foot wraps.  He doesn't want to go above, doesn't want to leave this burrow, these tunnels, his home. Fear grips him, twists his mind and his insides and he is frozen with it.

He can _taste_ the fear on the air.

_No, no, it can't be..._

But he knows that it is, that it must be.

_Beware old enemies slighted._

Maeve returns, a small wiggling bundle strapped across her chest in a carrying sling. The blanket has become a sash, held in place by the wrap of the sling and the knife belt she has added below it.  He stares at her, and his mind rebels against the vision. _This was supposed to be over, they were supposed to be safe, it has been four years..._

"Aster."

He tugs on his ears in distress.  "You know what's up there."

"Yes." she says, solemn. "I knew when I woke up, but I didn't-- Have you ever felt another fear like it?"

He smiles, and it is almost painful.  "Have you ever felt fear at all?" he asks, an old joke between them.

Maeve laughs and it is like glass, but it is what they need, laughter, light. They know what they are facing, and they know how to fight it, have fought it before.

He wonders what good it will do them.

"Come on," she says, taking his paw. "Let's go defend our home."

"We need to get to the ships," he says, standing, grabbing his hawthorn staff from where it rests against the wall.

"We will defend our village," Maeve insists as they fall into step as one, and the harsh edge to her words is not for him. "These Fearlings--"

"There shouldn't _be any Fearlings_ ," he says, shaking his head. The screaming grows louder as they navigate the tunnels. "We captured all of them, every one, sealed them away."

Maeve's response is tight and hollow. "Then they've escaped."

The last bend before the surface is just up ahead, and he grabs Maeve by the shoulders, stops her. Flickering shadows play against the earthen wall, diffused through the tall grasses and hanging vines that adorn the hillside beyond. They do not use doors, they have never needed them before. And the screams, the screams are visceral and immediate, echoing through their doorway, funneled into their home, and if Aster listens he can pick out individual voices of Pooka he has known for decades-- _don't listen, don't listen, get your family to safety_ \--and their screams are not the only ones out there. The Fearlings howl and the Nightmare Men screech their victories and Aster has already heard too much, too much.

"This won't be a matter of us defending our village, Maeve," he says. "Not if the prison has failed."

_It must have failed, there is no other way out._

"Failed..." she breathes.

He nods. That cage...it had been designed never to be opened. Locked and spelled, bound by time itself.  An entire planet, hollowed and recrafted as a prison by their strongest magics. The Elders had called it perfect. The epitome of their collective genius.  There was but one weak point, one door, and the honor of guarding it had been awarded to their greatest hero.

(They would learn, that even heroes can be fallible.)

Maeve presses her forehead to his, and Aster closes his eyes, breathing her in.  "Stay with me," she says.

"I'm not letting you out of my sight," he promises.

"We will direct the people to the ships.  If we can find father--"

"He'll be doing the same thing, you know he will."

She shakes her head. "There is a hall where the council meets. In Darrows. It has an off-world signal. He'll head there, if he can."

"We'll find him."

She pulls back to look at him. "I love you."

 _You're ridiculous_ , he thinks, but he can't make himself say it, so he nods.  One of the kits begins to cry. 

"Maeve--"

"Aster, if we don't leave now, I'm never going to, so let's just--"

"We're gonna be alright," he promises, pulling her in to touch his nose to her forehead one last time. 

_Just another battle, and they had won hundreds against these creatures._

"One." Maeve draws her weapons, looks at him. "Two. _Three_."

She darts forward, and he follows, down the hall and turning the corner just as long shadowy fingers are tangling in the vines, reaching for them in their sanctuary, reaching for their fear. Maeve slashes at the appendages and the creature withdraws, screeching. They leap into the night, and Aster spins his staff, the inky blackness bursting as he connects, once, twice, three times. He wishes he had a bit of Light for the end, but Light was special issue, and these were _peace_ times.  Maeve takes down another two with her daggers, and now the kits are screaming in their sling, confused and terrified to be woken with such motion. 

Aster shares half a look with her and they dart forward.

The forest around them burns, flickers orange and black against the hills, and Aster cannot tell the difference between shadow and _Shadow_. The creatures strike from the spaces in between, drawing black blades through the black night and even the blood looks black against the blaze of orange light as their people are slaughtered in the streets, overwhelmed by numbers and fear and the fury of monsters that have not tasted prey in years.

There are ships, if they can reach them, but they won't hold everyone. 

Aster dances through the carnage and tries to numb the thought that the ships might not have anyone left to hold.

Dream Pirates and Nightmare Men cut down his kin and smile with malformed mouths edged in sickly yellow, eye sockets empty and impassionate.  They kill because they kill because they kill and they feel _nothing_. The Fearlings feast, undulating with half-human forms in the wake of their fellows, swarming the survivors, inhabiting some, stealing the breath from others.  Aster doesn't watch, doesn't have to, because he has seen all this before on the frontlines of the War, the way the Fearlings hollow out their victims, leaving husks, swallowing the horror of the witnesses as a garnish. Each new soul, each new scream adds to their mass and when they are full to bursting they divide like amoeba into the darkness to replicate again.

Aster spins his staff and Maeve swings her daggers faster than his eyes can track them and the monstrosities fall and fall and fall, shrieking, dissolving, bursting before them as they carve a path through the shifting darkness. Maeve is shouting _to the ships, get to the ships!_ but even the Pooka that hear her through the cacophony are cut down before they can attempt to heed the order.  There are a few holding their own, soldiers like him and Maeve, who know how to combat the forces of shade and shadow, but they are few and they are moving no more quickly toward any hope of reprieve.  The Armies of Darkness are too many, Aster has _never seen so many_.  The depths of a bottomless prison emptied out. _Enough to threaten a galaxy.  Enough to cover their world._ Aster's body aches, straining to remember paces and positions that he hasn't used since the War, that he hadn't thought to have to use, again, _these were peace times, this was their Golden Age,_ but no matter how many Fearlings he fells, the wave is unending.

Darkness is their strength, and the night is deep.

Aster watches a swarm dip into the dark mouth of a burrow and he knows he can't hear the screaming coming from under the soil all around him, but he can feel it because he knows its there, his entire race crying out together. Theirs is the nearest civilization to that void world where the Pookan Elders had fashioned the Fearling prison, lending their wisdom and technological prowess to decide its form and function.

The proximity has seemed logical at the time.

They hadn't even bothered with protections. They had no fear, because _fear had been contained._ They had mastered their demons and in defiance walked freely in the sun.

(They had been so sure of their safety. They would pay for their arrogance.)

And then Aster sees the burn of fire on the horizon.  It sparks at the corner of his vision, and at first he pays it no heed, what is a flare in a sea of flame, but then the burn rises higher and Aster realizes.

_A ship._

It is only one, and Aster tracks its ascent even as he fights, bout after bout with the unending horde.  It is only one, but it is _hope_ , hope that there are others all over the world in little vessels here and there, _fighting, escaping, living_. Aster bashes in the skull-not-skull of a Nightmare Man, he swings his weapon with the strength that reckless, giddy hope instills in him and the Fearlings surrounding him scatter, their fear turned back on them. He watches the vile things scurry into the deeper darkness and none come to replace them, and the hope whispers to him that maybe, maybe all isn't lost. Maybe they can still save themselves. And he is exhausted and bloody but he can't help the dazed half smile that overtakes him.

(He will come to know that hope, too, can be a danger.)

"Maeve--"

He turns, and the landscape is fire and war, and smoke settles over everything like a shroud, stings his eyes and burns his throat, and even that is not so bad--they are good at growing things, this can be salvaged--but when he takes a breath and sees the...the bodies, _oh gods, the bodies_ , they layer the streets like paving stones, fur and blood and sightless eyes that still hold the fear that killed them, and that voice of hope turns ugly in his head.

Their reprieve is not a mercy. The Fearling horde has not been stemmed.

They've simply moved on.  Searching out fresh victims. 

Aster blinks blood out of his left eye, swipes hastily at the cut on his brow with the back of a paw. There are figures fighting Fearlings in the dark and one must be his mate but he can't make them out through the smoke. He pivots, dispatching a lingering Fearling himself, and then looks again.

"Maeve?"

But she isn't there.

"MAEVE!" he roars, scanning the scant struggling figures and the fallen in turn as he whirls his way back, or the direction he believes is back, the way they had come. He strikes down the creatures that get in his way, but he does not stop. Maeve is his priority, Maeve and their kits, he must protect his family, he can't survive without--

"MAEVE!" His attention is divided, and he is shocked when a knife buries itself in his thigh. He turns and crushes the Dream Pirate that stuck him, yanks the blade out quick and angry, turns back to his search--

Something _slams_ into his shoulder and Aster stumbles forward, catches himself against the heavy wood of his staff, but it slides on something soft, not the ground, and he goes down hard, fumbling his weapon.  He growls, half pain, half annoyance, and looks back there is a _harpoon_ protruding from the fur of his right shoulder.  He notes the dark line attached to the projectile, follows it with his eyes to its end, where it is clutched in the hands of a Dream Pirate that grins a yellow grin back at him.

_Get up Aster, get up!_

He scrambles, lurches to his feet, stumbling on corpses, but somehow manages to pull the small blade from the front of his bandolier. He reaches back and snaps the line between the blade and his thumb, but the drag of the shaft lodged in his muscle weighs him down, throws him off balance, and his staff is now a crutch to keep him upright, as he faces the creature, but its eyes are not on him.

"Come on!" he yells, reaching back to slide a boomerang free.

The creature tilts its head at him, its smoking mouth still grinning. It rolls its head forward again, staring past him. Aster is exposed and injured and he doesn't know what's going on, but the space around him is empty, save for his new friend, so he stays his weapon and follows its vacant gaze. There is blood in his eye again and he blinks and squints and makes out a large Nightmare Man a distance away, sword raised for a strike, tensed to bring it down on--

 _Maeve_.

Aster throws the boomerang, he thinks he yells, but it’s already too late. The Nightmare Man's blade catches her across the back while she is dispatching a Fearling.  It slices through to her spine, severing cloth and leather and tissue and she stumbles sideways as the kits' sling slides from its place against her body. The massive Nightmare Man steps over the small bundle and raises his sword again and cleaves at Maeve's skull. 

She goes still.

"Maeve...MAEVE!" He trips to all fours, stands again, scrambling forward, he has to get to--her, has to save--she's--she's--

Their kits--their kits--!

Black flickers across his vision and something catches him around the throat and yanks and Aster reels over backwards, choking. His bad shoulder jars against the ground and the barbed shaft of the harpoon wrenches in his flesh and he _screams._

_Get up, get to the kits, save them!_

He is gasping as he pushes against the ground and flops onto his stomach. There are more shadows behind him and he twists to face the threat. 

The Fearlings watch him.  The line of black rope he'd cut from the harpoon is looped like a noose around his neck and the Dream Pirate holding the end of the tether is smiling at him still.  He's lost his knife and he's down to one boomerang and if he tries to stand they'll just bring him down again. 

And the kits begin to cry. 

Aster's head snaps back to the little bundle in the grass. _No_.

The tiny wails are loud in the darkness.  It draws the attention of the Nightmare Man that killed their mother.

  _No no gods no please--_

Aster's ears are still ringing from the screaming that had died with his people, and his kits are crying and he _needs to get to them now_. He twists and lunges, forgetting in his panic that he is leashed like a slave. The rope tightens against his windpipe and snaps back so violently he sees light burst across his vision and he crumples in a heap, stunned.

_Get up GET UP._

He blinks and tries to shake the pain from his head and when the spots behind his eyes clear, the Nightmare Man is crouched over his kits and Aster cries out, a wordless, meaningless cry, because he _can't stop this and Maeve is dead and his people are dead and soon his children will be dead as well if he doesn't do something._

He wraps a paw around the length of cord behind him and pulls against the grip of the Dream Pirate, fighting to free himself, twisting like a madman.

They put another bolt in his shoulder. And when he still tries to crawl forward, clawing at the ground, a third. 

Aster sobs in pain and desperation and he's lightheaded from the smoke and the bloodloss and the panic and he'd promised Maeve they'd be alright, he promised her, he _promised_.

The scene starts to go fuzzy at the edges. 

He watches as the Nightmare Man over his kits is hissed away by a Fearling. It circles the bundle, reptilian in its movements, until it is close enough to dip its fingers into the slit in the fabric.  It pauses there in its exploration, looks up at him across the distance, can probably taste his terror from there. Aster's claws carve furrows in the dust and he is pleading for the lives of his children, the lives of his people, please please this can't be how it ends.

_"Stay with me," she says._

_"I'm not letting you out of my sight."_

The Fearling dips its head, and feasts. 

Aster feels his heart stop three times as each little voice falls silent.

_Maeve tugs him toward their room and he laughs out his objections, "The kits--I--just one more minute, one more--"_

He can't keep his eyes open, doesn't try, doesn't want to try, it doesn't matter anymore.

_"Sleep, my love," she whispers. "The world will still be here when you wake."_

But it won't.

It won't.

His world is gone.

Aster lets himself be lost.

\---

Light wakes him.

Light...wakes him.

He's alive?

He coughs, shifts, regrets. The rope around his neck and the weapons buried in his skin are gone, dissolved by the sun, but the wounds they left aren't.

But he is alive.

And if he is alive, is by some accident he has been spared, then maybe--maybe--

Hope stirs, unbidden, within him.

He strains his ears but there is no sound. No heartbeats, no footsteps, no shift of movement comes to him.

No tiny voices crying. Just the hiss of the wind and the pop of dying embers.

Just him, and the dead.

He just--he needs to see. He needs to see, even though he knows, he already knows--

He picks himself up, and standing takes an age.  And his injuries stretch and pull and he is so, so tired but that is not what makes it hard.

It's because he can't help but hope. Even though he knows, he _knows_...

\---

The sling is empty, when he reaches it.  There is nothing left.

He can't even look at Maeve. She's there, just--just feet from him and he can't--

\---

He doesn't remember leaving. Doesn't remember getting up. But he's walking, and the next time he looks down and sees bodies they are not the same bodies, and the hills are not the same hills. 

He keeps losing time.

 _Shock_ , his mind whispers.

He's not sure where he's going. 

_"If we can find father..."_

Oh.

Maeve had said...an off-world signal...surely someone had already...

\---

His body finds the councilmeet without him.  He comes back to himself three feet from the entrance.

He finds Maeve's father halfway down the tunnel, and keeps walking. 

He must do this one last thing, and then he can sleep.

Sunbeams filter into the hall from a skylight carved into the hill's peak.  He shuffles forward, searching for anything that may look like a communicator--

\---

"Captain Bunnymund! What--"

He knows that voice. Someone from--the army, he can't--there's a screen pulled up in front of him and he can't remember doing that but those are his paws on the dials, aren't they.  It doesn't matter. He has a report.

"The--the Prison has fallen."

There is a lot of noise from the other end of the connection, voices shouting things like _not possible_ and _he's out of his mind_ and _I told you those were distress signals!_

\---

"Bunnymund. Bunnymund!"

He blinks at the screen.

"Gods, you look dead on your feet. Listen, is there someone else we could talk to?"

"There is no one else," he says.

He doesn't remember anything after that. 

\----

When Aster wakes again, he's on a different planet. Everything smells different, strange, even under the anesthetic. An infirmary, then.

For a moment he can't remember why he's here.

And when he does, he doesn't want to.

\---

The Tsar himself comes to visit him.  They've had him under observation for...a long time, he thinks. He isn't sure. He sleeps a lot.  But from the way his wounds are healing he assumes it has been a long time.

"I'm sorry...I haven't had time to speak with you, before now."

Aster isn't sure if he's supposed to respond. He thinks he remembers questions being asked at some point, by nurses or soldiers or someone. He can't recall if he answered them or not. 

"You understand, we've been," the Tsar sighs heavily. "Trying to contain the threat, but a Fearling force of that size, and with the General fallen..."

Aster has heard those whispers.  The Golden General, now the Nightmare King. They say the Fearlings had eaten away his mind. The Tsar’s armies don't stand a chance.

(An age later he will swear he looked up to the sky that night as his planet burned, to where the Nightmare Galleon loomed, the shape of their Golden General at its helm.)

"Yours was not the only planet to be...well."

Gutted, he thinks numbly. Devoured.

"We are losing. No, we've--we've lost, already.  And while Fearlings will always be what they are, _Pitch Black_ , as he calls himself now, seems to have a--a vendetta, of sorts, against those of us who. Well.  We who were the architects of their downfall."

Aster looks at him, and he must look numb and _confused_ because the Tsar elaborates.

"Well, I mean, your species, for one. And my family, of course." He stares intently into the middle distance. "Mr. Bunnymund, we are not safe.  It has taken all of my efforts to evade the man and his minions so far.  We need to go into hiding, it is the only way.  I have a ship, the Moonclipper, which should be sufficient--"

Wait. Wait, _ships_.

"Did--did any of the ships m-ake it?" Aster asks, and his voice fights him. How long has it been since he used it?

The Tsar looks startled. "We have received...no word of any ships."

"I saw--I saw at least one take off."

The Tsar sighs for a second time. "The skies are not safe with the Nightmare Galleon haunting the paths between worlds. I don't think--"

"Wh-what about the others? The Shepherds, the planet guardians, has anyone--got in touch, told them--what happened?"

A third sigh. "Let me speak frankly, Mr. Bunnymund. I would not hold out hope. The reports are still coming in, and obviously some we have not yet heard from, but we have reason to believe that Pitch Black and his Fearling forces launched coordinated attacks against every world where a Shepherd was known to reside. So far...there have been no survivors."

Too much, it’s--too much. He can't handle. Any of this.

"As I said its--some sort of vendetta.  Pitch Black was very thorough, it seems." The Tsar pauses. "I am sorry."

No survivors. No--

They had brought this on themselves.

The Tsar had called for a Golden Age, the end of Fear.

The Pooka had designed a prison that could realize that dream.

 _We who were the architects of their downfall_.

They had just wanted to make a better world.

And now his family, his world, the ships, the Shepherds...gone.

 _Pitch Black was very thorough_.

Genocide.

No, it isn't possible, the Fearlings can't have gotten everyone. Aster can't be--

Alone.

"I have a favor to ask."

Aster looks at him.

"There is a planet, one with no moon, and fairly new as far as planets go. Our little craft would fit into the orbit very nicely. If we can manage it, I think--I think we might be safe there."

Aster has never met the Tsar before today, but he knows that 'we' does not include him. 

"The only problem is, it has never had a Shepherd, and it is a little unstable. I know it is not necessarily your area of expertise, but I would be forever in your debt, if you would just consider..."

He wants to ask what will happen to his planet, what they did with the uncountable remains of his people, but he can't make himself think the words, let alone say them aloud. He wants to know just how unstable this planet is, wants to know if the Tsar realized just how unstable he is himself.  He wants to know what will happen to the rest of the Lunanoff Empire when Pitch Black and his Fearlings cannot find the Tsar and Tsarina and their little son and he takes his fury out on their subjects. Or what will happen if Pitch finds them anyway.  Most of all he wants to know if he will always feel like this, or if he hides himself down far enough, the pain might finally go away.

He has nowhere else to go. There is...nothing else.

He is the last Pooka. 

There is no other option. Yes, he will accept. He will do this favor for the Tsar.

And then maybe he will learn to forget, for a while.

But his answer is too long in coming, and the Tsar leans in.

"Mr. Bunnymund," he says gravely. "I need to protect my family. You understand that, don't you?"

_“You're a father now," Maeve whispers to him, giddy._

"Yes," he says. "I do."


End file.
